touched with fire
by scapegracing1
Summary: 'Helga Hufflepuff is a soft place to fall.' One founder's departure through the eyes of another. Helga/Rowena, undertones of Rowena/Salazar.


Helga Hufflepuff is a soft place to fall.

She is also brilliant, also lovely, but less proud than her friends; loving, but rarely in love, nor does she desire to be. And this is why she sits close to Rowena, face turned to her cheek, the day after Salazar departs. Rowena, who above all else is afraid of falling, of landing alone, who sits straight and bare, arrowlike, seemingly untouched unless one recalls the way she leaned into him and he into her, never quite touching but unbearably close. Too close, really, for comfort.

This is why she is unsurprised when she sees the stirring in her friend's deep eyes when she turns to whisper in her ear, carefully soft. Her dearest friend.

Later that day she stands tall, taller than Rowena despite their true height, as she falls into her. Hands moving gentle but firm, soft but sure, over her skin, pressing into the thrum of blood beneath her white, white skin. Skin slides over skin and breath blends into breath till they almost - almost - forget which is which, who is who.

Their bodies become one in a single exquisite moment but Helga, in her strong mind and her wide, wide heart, holds herself carefully apart.

* * *

><p>Helga is soft, but not always yielding. This is why she is glad, breathes a little easier, when four becomes three, even as the silent grief chokes and roils her insides. She knows it is for the better.<p>

His departure is something she can she can live through and, with time, she believes Hogwarts can as well. Yes; Hogwarts will emerge stronger if less whole; purer, if emptier without his volatility.

Godric has taken to drinking these days, weighed down with grief and grievance: things that he has never learned to bear quietly. She watches and watches over him; knows sadly that he will never be quite the same again. Godric, for all his temper and courage, had loved and trusted as fiercely and easily as he hated, and though in those last days he had hated Salazar it had never quite outstripped his love. Leaving under the cover of night was surely the greatest betrayal of trust he could have imagined from a man he loves like a brother, like all the brothers left in faraway lands whom he had fought to the death with but would have fought to death for as well.

So she spends more time in his company than she might have otherwise, draws a smile out of him that comes more easily each time, if no less sad. Eventually he will pull through, and she will be the one who has held them together, even if no one realizes.

* * *

><p>As for Salazar, she has not forgotten him. He is not one to be forgotten, and Helga prides herself on never forgetting.<p>

What no one else knows is that he reminds her of the older brother she had love and then lost as a girl of barely eight years of age. Herald Hufflepuff had been tall, sly and mercurial, a man made of bone and ambition, too large for the life he was meant to have lived. He left home at the age of fourteen and died before he was eighteen, charred beyond recognition on a minor battlefield.

Helga may not have been quite as intelligent as Rowena, but she does understand this: a candle that burns at both ends will consume itself in half the time, and all else around it will be lost to the fire if one is not careful enough.

And so he is the dearest to her of her three friends, for all their disagreements and his sneering anger; she loves him for his lurking passion, his darkness, and his high hard dreams. She loves him, loves them both, but knows he cannot stay.

She lets him go quickly, quietly, before any of the others realize. She did not burn the final thread that holds them together but in her own way, she is as responsible as Godric for the last they see of Salazar.

And she grieves, she grieves, but she does not regret.

* * *

><p>Helga knows she is the strongest pillar of Hogwarts. She is more untouchable than Rowena, more steady than Godric, more clear of mind than Salazar; more.<p>

It is no wonder that she lingers the longest of the four friends, a bright figure at the center of the great table, so steady and simple and strong one first forgets that she sits alone, then remembers that she does not truly need anyone else.

(and she likes it that way)


End file.
